SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 04, 2001
Power play
SNM ABDI
TIMES NEWS NETWORK
Comrade Prachanda, alias Pushpan Kamal Dahal, is a shadowy chief. He leads the Maoist revolution in Nepal. The world's most secretive mass leader tells SNM Abdi that he detests moderates
Prachanda, or The Powerful One, is addicted to buffalo milk. He gulps down two big glasses of fresh frothy milk - unboiled and without sugar - at the crack of dawn before switching on the small Sony radio for the latest news from Nepal, India and around the world. Station-surfing over, he sits down to read and write, often dictating to a confidante. The morning routine never changes. Neither does the security cover for one of South Asia's most wanted men - 16 bodyguards with AK-47s - a human shield that the enemies of Nepal's Fidel Castro have not dared to test.
Pushpan Kamal Dahal alias Prachanda rules one-third of Nepal after a six-year-old civil war that has claimed 2000 lives in the once-peaceful Himalayan kingdom. Even Kathmandu admits that its writ doesn't run anymore in as many as 25 out of 73 districts where the Reds run a parallel government - collecting taxes, running schools, hospitals, post-offices, buses and dispensing justice. And the goal of the revolutionary army of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) fighters, led by the charismatic Comrade Prachanda, is to quickly capture the other two-thirds still ruled by Nepal's constitutional monarch King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev, and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba's Nepali Congress Party government.
"The Maoist revolution will be completed very soon, not in the remote future," says the shadowy rebel boss who moves from bunker to bunker. He is one of the most secretive mass leaders in the world, with only two photographs of him known to exist. The Nepali media - newspapers and TV channels - carry the same pictures day after day. But his hardline views are well-known. "All moderates are opportunist dogs, I detest them. There is no alternative to people's war and the gun is the best tool for social transformation."
Prachanda, who underwent military training while at university, adds gleefully, "Ultimately, we will have to fight the Indian Army. And it will be a very good thing because we will capture lots of guns from them. It will be our national war of independence." His logic is that New Delhi will, sooner or later, come to the rescue of the Nepal government tottering under a heavy Maoist assault.
According to Prachanda, colonialism, feudalism, imperialism, capitalism and revisionism are all bad. But peasants are good. And politicians are bad. He entered Leftist politics in 1971 through a faction of the Communist Party, moving on to more radical groups, eventually ending up at the top of the Maoist faction in the mid-1990s.
Born on December 11, 1954, in Dhikurpokhri village of Kaski district in the Himalayan foothills, Prachanda was christened Chabilal by his father Muktiram Dahal who worked as a farm hand. When he was seven, the family migrated to Shivnagar in southern Nepal. At the Narayani High School, he apparently impressed his teachers so much with his intelligence and conduct that they rechristened him Pushpan Kamal after the lotus, a symbol of purity and beauty. "As a child, he never lied or fought with other children. In fact, he was called to mediate and resolve disputes. I thought he'd grow up and join the civil service," says Muktiram, who hasn't seen his son since 1995.
After school, Prachanda enrolled at the Rampur Agricultural College, a 30-minute bicycle-ride from Shivnagar. "Students started coming to our house.
I learnt that he was dabbling in politics.
I told him - we are poor, we can't afford politics, politics can destroy us. But he didn't listen to me. Even today, I'm pained when I hear that people are being killed on my son's orders."
Prachanda describes himself as an easy-going, fun-loving schoolboy who sang and danced and played football, volleyball, and kabaddi. "But one day I saw a moneylender insulting my father. My father fell at the moneylender's feet. But the moneylender kicked him. It lit a fire inside me. It was a political lesson I never forgot. It changed the course of my life."
Despite his Leftist leanings, after graduation Prachanda worked for USAID for a few months before plunging full-time into politics. But long before that, he married Sita Paudal. Nobody knows where Prachanda's wife ands children live. Not even Muktiram.
The battle-hardened Prachanda's biggest regret in life is that he was not by his mother's side when she died. "She had blood cancer and in 1995 we got her admitted to the Bir Hospital, the best in Kathmandu. My brother and I spent a month with her in the hospital. But somebody tipped off the police and I had to vanish before they nabbed me. I think it is the biggest personal sacrifice I ever made."
But the uncompromising fighter concedes that he has a sweet tooth. He is also a passionate fan of Karisma Manandhar, the Madhuri Dixit of Nepal, and is known to travel miles to see her new releases. However, for Prachanda, his cause is all-consuming. "Maoism is spreading faster today than yesterday," he maintains, firmly.
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